Sound the trumpets folks! It’s book #2 of the 100 I’m supposed to read for this year.

I’ll be the first to admit I’m a little slow coming out of the starting gates. My calculations tell me that I should have completed 7.2 texts thus far. I’ll catch up, I promise.

The Tourmaline may be partly to blame. Paul Park is refreshingly creative, defying all sorts of standard fantasy tropes, but necessitating careful, deliberate reading. This would be fine if I had all year to read these books, but I’m on a schedule, man! (This is why Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell may have to wait for my retirement before I read it). Curse you, Mr. Park, for your dream-logic scenes and unpredictable plot! I can read four formulaic Grisham novels in the time it takes to unravel one of your complex works!

The Tourmaline is the sequel to A Princess of Roumania, and follows the adventures of Miranda Popescu, her friends, and her enemies (Paul Park’s villains are sometimes deeper and more compelling than the protagonists) in the real Europe. Our world is an elaborate, imaginative construct, destroyed when its magical history is thrown on a fire, transporting Miranda and her two friends into a world in which England was torn apart by a natural disaster, Rome is in ruins, and an ancient Greek pantheon competes with the religion of King Jesus and Queen Mary Magdelene (the cross is still the symbol of Jesus, for he crucified the vanquished Roman generals). Miranda and her two friends struggle not only with the trials of this new world, but with the tension between their old New Jersey identities and their “real” Roumanian identities. For example, Miranda’s friend Andromeda, who once shopped at Victoria’s Secret, is also the Roumanian male general, Sasha Proshenko (and somehow also a were-dog).

I’ll be honest–I’m used to more approachable fantasy, and I definitely wouldn’t these to someone who wanted to escape into the world of Dragonlance. That said, I read fantasy to discover new worlds, and in the Roumania series, Paul Park has created an amazing new milieu to explore.